30 Days, Sixty Years
by claudiapriscus
Summary: Thirty drabbles (and almost drabbles) about Rory and Amy building a new life in the old century.
1. Postcards

**One**

It starts out as a joke, listing all the famous historical moments they have to look forward to. Somehow that morphs into famous people and famous photographs, and that then turns into trying to sneak into the background. It's harder to pull off than it first seemed but they keep doing it- racing to find familiar landmarks, familiar angles, and then waving and pulling faces madly. Rory calls them postcard moments, and Amy hope he's right: She imagines the people she loved stumbling across them and understanding the message there: Love you, miss you, wish you were here.


	2. Endings

**Two**

"Oh!" Rory stops abruptly in the middle of doing dishes one Sunday dish he'd just picked up goes clattering back into the sink. "Rory?" Amy says, worried. Rory shakes his head."It's nothing." Amy just looks at him. "Oh, come on." He gives her a sheepish look. "You know, it just hit me- " Amy raises an eyebrow, and he sighs."Well - I am never going to catch the end to London Lost." Amy frowns, "The film series?" Rory fidgets. "Well-um- yeah." Amy grins, rolls her eyes, and smacks him with the towel.


	3. Dread

**Three**

The war creeps up on them. They remember, of course, history lessons and the endless talk of the Blitz and the old people who would go on about all the heroes of those days. It looks different from this end of history. It's raw and brutal in a way that's not at all ameliorated by knowing how it ends. It's worse, in a way, knowing about the horrors yet unreported. On those days when the neighbors gather and worry and talk, sometimes Amy will look up and catch Rory's gaze and know that he's feeling the same.


	4. Cover

**Four**

There are gaps they can't easily fill. Questions they can't answer. They paper them over with stories and hope it's enough to account for the things they don't know and the things they do wrong and the paperwork they can't provide. Amy puts on airs and hints at elopment, and the lady down the hall doesn't question when she's befuddled by the laundry or can't set her hair. Rory apologizes for getting mugged, and they apply for citizenship. It's easier, some ways, being in America, where their foreignness excuses a lot. They read, trying to absorb cultural references and news and historical narratives that are slightly sideways from the ones they learned in school, and hope it's enough.**  
**


	5. Consequence

**Five**

So it turns out that saving the life of Der Fuhrer, assaulting him, and then locking him in his own cupboard is the sort of thing that carries consequences. It'd happened so long ago for them that they'd kind of forgotten it was still recent now. Recent enough to draw the attention of very serious people, the kind who were very interested in newly arrived immigrants with no known history or paperwork. So maybe Amy had simply been a very posh lady, now run away for love. And muggings did happen, of course. And the occasional record-destroying fire, too. But it's all very convenient, say the serious men in the very drab suits.


	6. Suspicion

**Six**

Just when Rory's starting to think it's maybe it's all going to end several decades too soon with a firing wall or something, the serious men offer him a job. Well, It's not really an offer. It's a significant-pause suggestion. They say: There's a war coming. A man in your position...won't want there to be any question, am I right? Think about it. And then they get up to leave. One waits until the others have filed out of the room before leaning over and saying, "Really Winston Churchill?" Rory says nothing, just stays carefully blank. The man grins and taps his nose.


	7. Vindication

**Seven**

The blank stare isn't an affectation. Rory isn't going to argue with the people who have suddenly decided that he's not a nazi spy just because their reasoning seems inexplicable. So he just sits there, waiting. Waiting's easy, he's had lots of practice. Eventually they process him out or whatever it is they do and he's shown the door and given a few surreptitious but heartfelt handshakes. It's all very bizarre, but he's used to bizarre, and so he doesn't question it until he gets home. "Well, I couldn't exactly let them drag you off for the duration." Amy says, her face buried in his neck. "And he owed me."

**TBC**


	8. Uniform

**Eight  
**

Amy used to tease him about looking good in uniform, but she doesn't now. "It's stupid," she says, brushing at his shoulders as if she could brush away what the uniform means. "We're going to win anyway, why do you have to go?" He shrugs. "Well, jail for one. I'd like to avoid that." She sighs. "At least I could visit you in jail. I just hate it, that's all. I don't want to be Penelope." He catches her eye. "But you would." She places one hand on his cheek. "Of course I will, stupid. But don't make me. I detest tardiness." He grins. "Yes, ma'am."


	9. Memory

**Nine**

He's only been gone a few months, but the days stretch out to an intolerable degree. They've made friends, but it's somehow worse that way. There's so much she can't say, can't share. She wants to snap every time someone brings up the Great War. As if it should mean something to Amy, who never lived it. She doesn't, of course. It surely means something to Amelia Williams (b. 1907), brought up by her maternal uncle, Brigadier-General Burnside. So she stays silent, and she waits, and wonders how she'll ever survive four more years of this.


	10. Anchor

**Ten**

At first she's lonely, and then she's angry, but the feeling that sticks with her is the nagging, puzzled sense of _wrongness_. Rory's off having mysterious adventures and she knows it's petty- it was that or the maybe-literal firing squad, and it's not something Rory would have ever chosen for himself. She's always been the one trying to push it a little further, go charging in... and he's always been the anchor, steady and unmoving. But the viciously jealous war has seen fit to take both her role and her husband, leaving her unmoored.


	11. Opportunities

**A double drabble this time.  
**

**Eleven**

She's planning her supper and not really paying attention the day she walks into her kitchen to discover a stranger sitting there. Startled, she drops her groceries. She grabs a chair, brandishing it at the man sitting serenely at her table. "Who are you?" She demands. The man, unperturbed, pushes a file towards her. "Mrs. Williams," he says, "I'm here on behalf of the government. Your husband tells us you've got some...specialized skills." Amy doesn't let go of the chair, though she does let it sag a little. "Yeah, so?"

"Your country needs you, Mrs. Williams."

Amy sets the chair on the floor and sits in it. "It's not my country yet," she says. The man's expression doesn't change. "A technicality." Amy raises an eyebrow. "Oh?" The man shrugs. It's very...deliberate. "I'm sure it'll get cleared up soon," says. "But in the meantime...We've got a situation that might interest you," he says. "Requires a specialist." Amy keeps her face neutral. "And my husband?" she asks. "Wouldn't dream of breaking up such an esteemed partnership." Amy folds her arms and doesn't even glance at the file before her. "When do I leave?"


	12. Trio

**Twelve**

So it turns out that space Nazis are even more troublesome than the ordinary variety, and space Nazis from the future are the very, very worst. There's too many of all three types across wartime Europe. But, she has to admit, it surely beats planting victory gardens and waiting for her brains to melt from boredom. It's just her and Rory and lots, and lots of running. And if there's a hole there, if it hurts sometimes to be a duo rather than a trio... Well. There's not a lot of time to dwell on it.


	13. Memento

**Thirteen**

It's a dark and early morning, and it's pouring rain. They're waiting for their transport, but it doesn't seem to be in any hurry to get there. They're huddled so close together under the absolutely tiny and laughably inadequate makeshift rain shelter that Amy can feel Rory's huff of laughter more than she can hear it.

"What?"He turns just enough to let her peek past his shoulder and points into the corner. It takes her a second to see what he's pointing at. It's a rough-cut sketch of a man peering over a wall, and underneath it, _kilroy was here_.

"Another one?" Amy shakes her head, amused. "Don't they know how to draw anything else?"

"Apparently not."

Amy squeezes past Rory to take a closer look. She runs her fingers over the wood, then digs out her pocketknife. She spends an industrious minute carving something below the figure, before stepping back to admire her handiwork. "What do you think?"

Rory."You didn't finish it."

She passes him the knife. "I'll let you do the honors."

Just below the owl, he slowly and carefully carves out:

O RLY


	14. Remnant

**Fourteen**

The Doctor's not around, but his fingerprints are everywhere. Apparently he had this thing for wartime Britain. He certainly left enough messes behind. It's kind of novel to be the ones saddled with the aftermath. Sometimes she dares to hope it's a sign that he's trying to cheat, to find some way back to them paradox or no, but she's seen the pictures, heard the descriptions, and it's never her raggedy man. His past, she assumes. A Doctor who doesn't know them, won't know them. It's an assumption she avoids questioning too closely.


	15. Victory

**Fifteen**

The war ends on time, right as it was supposed to. But nothing could have prepared her for the reality of V-E day. It overwhelms, it consumes, and even though she'd known it was coming, time had worn away whatever distance she'd been granted by being born on the other side of history. She remembers the days when patriotic fervor was made safe with irony, when the monuments and speeches felt awkward at best. It's weird though, this moment, because she's seeing it through double vision: the moment she's in, and the moment as she'll see it sixty years from now.


	16. Parade

**Sixteen**

So, ticker-tape parades. He's used to thinking of them as metaphorical. The real thing is...messy and spontaneous and part of the insane celebratory chaos of V-J day. This New York does not feel as alien as the one they first arrived in. They're not spectators here. He's lived this before - or not lived it - in a world without stars. But it's different- it feels more real this time around. And although the cost of peace is horrific, he's incredibly relieved- to the point of being drunk with it- that it is finally over.


End file.
